Current thoughts

So, I was near the top of my class in high school, president of the Drama club, brilliant and vibrant - and the only scholarship for college that I was awarded was one set up by my aunt in memory of my cousin who'd died shortly after graduating high school.  I cried on award night.  The next day, a teacher of mine remarked smugly that I must have been so glad to have gotten an award because of my tearful reaction.  I replied, "I would rather have won no scholarship at all in place of my cousin."

10 years later, a double major with honors (Phi Beta Kappa), my loans paid off, and four-point-five years of teaching and living in Japan under my belt, I'm thinking to myself that this go 'round, because I am going back into academics, I am not taking out loans, I am getting scholarships.  I am going to be paid to work hard at school.  I don't do things half-assed, I don't cheat, I don't slack off.  Less deserving people (and believe me, the daughter of the teacher who made the above remark was much less deserving) get scholarships all the time.  I'm an investment worth taking.  I prove myself again and again.  My current stint in a cafe, hourly wage plus tips that probably keeps me hovering around the poverty line, is not where I will be in five years.

I am breathing.  I am doing art.  I am learning.